« In Memoriam: Rosa Parks | Main | The Press's Superman Complex »

October 26, 2005

I'm not a public-choice theorist--much to my chagrin, my studies in political science have been almost strictly qualitative--but I do know the essentials of the field, or at least as much as anyone else who's finished a master's degree coursework at a competent university would. Fortunately, the Internet has democratized even what was once rare information, available more or less only to specialists: here is a competent outline of the theory. (See also this Wikipedia entry on Mancur Olson.)

Hugh Hewitt challenges anyone to argue, using the basics of public choice theory, that Republican senators should not vote to confirm Harriet Miers. I offer, from a strictly academic perspective, four reasons why they should not.

1. The public does not perceive Miers as qualified. True, CNN initially reported that a plurality of the public rated her as qualified. However, the numbers for Miers were far below those for Roberts, and I believe below nearly every other recent Supreme Court nominee in recent history. And today, Bloomberg reports that a slight plurality now see her as unfit for the Court.

2. Conservative groups are not rallying behind the President. Of course, one of the major planks of public choice theory is that self-interested and highly motivated groups can get their way on issues of public import even if their desires would be counterproductive to the public interest. In other words, were conservative groups to be able to credibly threaten legislators by withholding their support later on (for instance, in primary battles or in fundraising), then they might be able to force through an unpopular Court nominee even against modest but broad opposition among the public. But this is not what has happened.

3. The President lacks political capital to force compliance. Neither is the president himself able to act as an organized interest group acting on his own behalf. With approval ratings below fifty percent, and with the upcoming months unlikely to bring any major successes to the White House, it's unlikely that there will be substantial penalties for bucking the executive on this issue. In fact, given the notably tepid reaction of much of the conservative base (now spreading to the Republican members of the Senate) and the cool reception to the Miers nomination among the public at large, there may indeed be benefits for self-styled "mavericks" among the majority to join with the opposition by taking a principled stance. Republican senators in swing states may indeed be tempted to follow this course out of pure self-interest.

4. The institutional arrangement of the Senate augurs against disciplinary measures by the leadership. The notoriously weak ability of the Senate leadership to exercise discipline over its co-partisans lessens the harm to members for disobeying what is, nominally, the party line. (In particular, one might add, the strained relationship between Senator Specter and the bulk of his caucus makes it difficult for the leadership to exert control in the Judiciary Committee.)

Instead of finding that there is an obvious case for Republican senators' supporting Miers, we see instead that there is a strong case to be made (for some of them, at least) to vote against her. What explains the difference between my analysis and Hewitt's? It is that he commits the cardinal sin of anaylsis: choosing the wrong unit to examine. His post looks at the interests of the Republican Party, which is why he discusses the "51-49 nation" and talks about the problems of being "in the minority."

But the United States is not a parliamentary system, and "the Republican Party" as such (that is, the president and members of Congress) cannot be in the minority. The interests of Republican legislators are not perfectly aligned with the interests of the president--especially as the congressional party gears up for midterms that (if the insiders' polls in the front pages of National Journal and Charlie Cook's columns are any indications) could be bloody for the majority party.

It is not hard to make a plausible case that being too close to the president could hurt legislative candidates. President Clinton came to the same conclusion, in reverse, in 1996; is it inconceivable that congressional Republicans could devise a "triangulation" strategy of their own?

Having answered Hewitt's challenge, I would like to turn briefly to other parts of his argument. In the first place, does he really believe that--with a war on, as the saying goes--voting against a Supreme Court nominee that more Americans oppose than support "will be political suicide...if the nomination is defeated?" In the second place, does he really think that the measured lack of support for Miers among the Senate Republicans is "high panic"? And third, does he not understanding that invoking public choice theory in support of a policy proposition is a tremendously revealing argument? Public choice theory, as explained above and here, usually postulates that the result of self-interested and highly organized groups is a policy not in the best interests of the public as a whole. Justifying one's position by such a naked and narrow appeal to self-interest may, in fact, be the last refuge of a bad argument.

Posted by Paul Musgrave at October 26, 2005 01:31 AM

Comments

Posted by: Jim S at October 26, 2005 03:00 AM | permalink

Posted by: Eric Seymour at October 26, 2005 12:59 PM | permalink

Posted by: Chuck at October 26, 2005 03:14 PM | permalink

Posted by: Grizzie at November 29, 2005 04:05 PM | permalink

Post a comment